


new moons (always make me feel a bit lonely)

by NoteInABottle



Category: Assassination Classroom
Genre: Coming Out, Confessions, Hurt/Comfort, Late Night Conversations, M/M, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-01
Updated: 2020-03-01
Packaged: 2021-02-28 03:22:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,405
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22976848
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NoteInABottle/pseuds/NoteInABottle
Summary: Nagisa's life is falling apart, and Karma helps him put it back together.
Relationships: Akabane Karma/Shiota Nagisa
Comments: 10
Kudos: 295





	new moons (always make me feel a bit lonely)

**Author's Note:**

> I have late night conversations with the moon, he tells me about the sun and I tell him about you.  
> \- S.L. Gray

The room is too hot, too crowded, and too stuffy. The bright lights above the white laid-out tables hurt Nagisa's eyes, and the sparkling gold champagne fizzles too loudly in his ears. He doesn't want to be here. He wishes he could leave.

In front of him, Karma is the center of attention, his red hair too-vivid in the bright light, his lips catching into a smile, lazy and self-assured, always with a hint of arrogance that has come as naturally to him as breathing. There is a gold band on his finger and it glints in the light.

"Woaaah~" Sugino is saying, leaning over to get a better look. "Who would have thought that you'd be the first one out of all of us to get engaged! What a dog, Karma! Is she pretty?"

Karma just laughs, too-bright and mocking, as Sugino pushes drunkenly at his shoulder.

"Come on~~ give us a picture!"

"Why would I give you a picture?" Karma wants to know. "So that you can slobber all over it? Down, Sugino. Pass me another drink."

Suddenly, Nagisa can't take this anymore. He has tried to get drunk tonight, in order to survive the next few hours. It feels like poison in his veins instead of alcohol, and he can feel it burning painfully inside his veins. This was a mistake, to come here.

He gets up to leave. Nobody stops him.

At the entrance to the room, he takes a moment to lean against the wooden sliding door, dizzy for a moment. A burst of laughter erupts behind him, and it chases him out.

He doesn't belong here anymore, Nagisa realizes with a sickening feeling. Everyone in there has their lives together now, they're feeling on top of the world. He would just be dragging the mood down if he stayed.

It's still a few minutes after sunset, so the sky is a dark blue instead of black, and up in the mountains, it's clear enough for millions of stars to dot the night sky. Nagisa looks up, it's a new moon, so there's just an empty void where that light should be, like a hole punched into the ceiling of the world. He thinks that it's appropriate - that's what his life is right now.

"Nagisa, what are you doing?"

There's only one person quiet enough to sneak up on him like that, but Nagisa startles anyway. His heart leaps to his throat, and in the next instant, it's hammering in his chest. "Karma?"

"Hey," Karma hops down easily from the ledge and walks out onto the grass, joining him out on the empty field that used to be their training grounds.

He looks around, hand in his pockets, and smiles.

"This is where I tried to kill him for the first time," he says. Countless other times had followed, but you never really forget your first. "Man, I was a self-absorbed brat back then."

"We all were," Nagisa says softly, instead of teasing him back: _You still are a self-absorbed brat, Karma._

Karma looks at him. "Not you," he said. "You were the first one to try the self-sacrifice play, I heard. It was pretty crazy, but hey, it almost worked, right?"

"Not really." Nagisa hadn't even thought of it himself, not really. He had been bullied into it. It all seems so far away now.

"I shouldn't be here," Nagisa finally admits. "It feels wrong, celebrating his death." It would be like pretending that what they did was right. It would be like pretending they had done all they could, instead of the brutal reality that they had been driven to murder. And that Nagisa had been the one to commit it.

"Nagisa - "

" _I_ shouldn't be here."

"Enough, Nagisa."

Nagisa stops. He has never heard that tone of voice from Karma before.

He makes the mistake of looking up into Karma's eyes. They're yellow-golden in the dim light, like two moons glowing in the darkness of the night, intense and impossible to look away from. Karma is a solid presence, he's always been. It's just the two of them out here on the open field, but Nagisa feels like it's crowded again, like Karma's presence has taken up everything, has replaced even the starry sky.

"You did nothing wrong," Karma tells him gently. He comes a little closer, and although Nagisa is grateful for the protection against the wind he provides, it makes his throat feel dry and his head spin.

"I should leave." Nagisa doesn't want to be out here anymore. It was a mistake to ever believe that being alone with Karma would be a good idea.

"Don't."

And just like that, Nagisa stops.

After a moment, he tries to restart the conversation, to give them both an excuse for standing outside in the cold, two feet apart, staring at each other.

"When did that happen?" He nods to the ring on Karma's finger and immediately wants to die. Of all fucking things to ask about, why the one thing he did _not_ want to hear an answer to?

"Oh. This?" Karma looks at his fingers as if he's surprised to find a ring there. "This is fake, a way to keep women from approaching me. I thought you knew that. Do you really think I'd start dating without anybody else finding out?"

"Oh." Nagisa struggles to come up with a response to that. Something twists inside him, and he's not sure whether it's relief or despair. He has a very distinct impression of being caught between two desires - to stay, and to leave.

"Is that why you were staring?"

" _What?_ "

"You were staring," Karma says. His hand comes up to Nagisa's cheek, and he's smiling when he brushes the ends of Nagisa's hair. "I could tell."

"No, I wasn't."

Karma doesn't buy it. "Is that why you've been acting so weird?"

"Karma."

"What? Everyone noticed it. You haven't been yourself, lately. That's why I followed you. Is there something wrong?"

"Yes." The honesty surprises them both, but Nagisa is done with the games and the pretending. He's tired of it.

Karma goes from inquisitor to friend almost immediately. "Did something happen?"

Nagisa squeezes his eyes shut. He doesn't want to cry, not right now.

"My parents split up again," he whispers. _And it's my fault._

"Shit," Karma has no right to look that devastated or that angry, all the emotions that Nagisa himself had gone through mere days earlier. He scrubs a hand through his red hair, suddenly floundering now that the problem isn't something he can track down and kill. "Shit, that sucks."

Somehow, it makes Nagisa feel better.

"It's not just that." It's the first in a whole laundry list of things that have gone wrong recently. Kayano. The school. This place, and all that it means to him, slipping away. He had learned so much here, but it hadn't been enough to prepare him for this.

"I told them I was gay."

His throat constricts around the words, but Nagisa says them anyway. This is Karma that he's talking to, his best friend. If he can't tell Karma this, then there's no point at all.

 _We've been to the moon together_ , he reminds himself. But still, he braces for everything to change.

"Oh," Karma says instead, and he sounds both shocked and oddly pleased.

Nagisa glances up at him. _Oh?_ Is that all? But Karma is just watching him with the kind of open surprise on his face that makes him seem much younger than he actually is.

"Did you know?" Nagisa asks.

Karma hesitates. "I … wondered." He sounds oddly gentle, like he's afraid of something, but Karma has never been scared of _anything_.

"I didn't realize it until recently," Nagisa admits. _Not until it was too late._

"I figured."

"How did you -" Nagisa can't finish. His heart is jittering painfully in his chest. He's used to this kind of tension between them - it's a familiar callback to when the two of them stopped being such close friends. When Nagisa had seen Karma's crazy smile, had felt drawn in like a moth to a flame, and had been too terrified to come any closer.

Karma sighs and looks up to the sky. It's gone dark, and even with all the stars out, his expression is hard to read.

"I didn't know," he said. "I _wondered_ , because, you see, I'm in love with you."

**Author's Note:**

> [google doc](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1He-FkmxRTbwUW1V9v5eTq9mPXxaS1a13UPw9QlHVZCg/edit?usp=sharing)   
>  [twitter](https://twitter.com/noteinabottle1)


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